Lombard trilogy., Page 2

Antonio was a manager of Brescia who was going to Madrid for holiday. He had given the fly at Malpensa, which was of Alitalia. He was thinking that the Italian company didn’t be so bad as it has been descript, but his idea could be too optimist. In fact he must make the queue between employees whom know little the hours of the arriving and the starting, but the coffee-room works worst for the slowness of the waiters, and other difficulties were similar.

  Nevertheless it his fly started only with an half hour of delay. Antonio posed near his chair the last book of Isabel Allende, because he liked the south-America literature and , once leaving the airport, hoped that early he will find the peace and he will interest to lecture. I liked the elegant style, but in same time fluent, of Allende.

  Near him, there is the chair of a gentle woman 40 years old, probably the same age of Antonio. He doesn’t know if to continue the lecture or to speak some words with her. The woman had fear of the fly, but, when the hostess has given her the coffe, she was more free. The people in the air was of all the nationalities, but the Italians were the majority and their behavior was chaotic. The Spanish people made their things more quietly, but also they explicated their ideas with high voice.

  Antonio and this woman were together from North Italy and were telling the same considerations about the Italian policy. Particularly Antonio retained that the Spanish Federalism was a strong reality, when in Italy we would wait by its point of view 10 years for obtaining something of similar. Antonio arrived at Madrid without other delays. He called the taxi for going in Hotel and next has given something for the dinner. I liked the art of XVII and XVIII, also if in Lombardia he remembered more the gothic. But however he considered the Spanish architecture more modern than Italian.

  If in a political context the Spain was more advanced by civil rights, also their technological level is going to overcome the our. He was posing in the dinner some questions still more complex. In fact, as we have spoken, Antonio had good lectures and I would like to find a relation between his books and the impressions of the travel. He has been last time in Austria and he liked in Wien the Freud psycho-analysis and the Expressionism; he had tried often to understand the sense of the fall of this Imperium, probably by the Lenin activities.

  About the art context, Antonio considered Klimt the best innovator in the painting of first 1900.He had read in a book that Klimt had been the first modern artist to utilize a certain type of geometry, making a model which increased its light for the near religious effect of the golden back-ground; the research of particularities in the gold happened first of the the collage technical.

  So the thinking resulted similar to the art, in a static aspect of dream, posed in the “hic et nunc” which about the critics of the Middle Age art talked.

  By his view in the painting of Klimt there was an erotic evidence, which the psycho-analysis could read in the sublimation. That didn’t avoid to him of thinking to the nice woman which he had known in the fly. But as expert of literature of the Latin-America in a general way, he asked him-self if the questions of Borgess or Saramago could be posed in a global context. He would collocate those authors of Latin language near the Wien culture of 1930, where he had liked particularly the Krauss ideas, the big author about the failure of the West society.This author in fact had an experience about the positivism, but also something of surely new, clear in his memory, as if for a his word the fantasy could have reality.

  Thinking to ”déjà-vu” in a similar context, the situation of his life was giving reality to a continue and unlimited offer of Plato models. In this back-ground the Kraus behavior results one and related to the Imperial decadence, what that nobody could avoid to assume if being around this particular context. This vision of Wien so was therefore a great diffusion of coffee polemics and “pamphlet” publications, but we shouldn’t considerer less important the aspect of the love with the girls: Schnitzler and Roth had descript typical situations where good girls, which had a certain education, achieved a strong ability also in the love affairs.

  But he didn’t be so good to give a sense to this problem, because the taste of a “paella” excited his senses and the red wine had an effect still stronger. He read some page of “New York Time” which had given gratis in the air. He was an active manager and was interested to the market variations. He has drunk the coffee and has walked out in the street. The restaurant, where they have eaten the lunch, was between the hard luxury and the caloric restriction of those last standards .He had given great parts of case and speck, because eating so much would give him the necessary energies to entry in a positive feed-back with the urban characteristics.

  Once out, he returned to the first considerations and had a particular sadness. He was walking for 2 hours randomly in the centre streets and next hungry would return early in Hotel for sleeping. Madrid was rich of antiquary stores and exposition rooms, so the eyes, if they were absent, found references whom had given a true sense to his path. Therefore the typical locals, which he could see in contexts of great mass of people, have gone from the “art-déco” of Nederland style and the hard smell of the Indonesian pubs. The global city returned to have its original historical back-ground.

  The travel had been long and would like to sleep. But the Hotel was in suburbia and he had seen early as the urban model of the city changed. In the centre they were Universities and Ministers, and the tourist found useful many restaurants with standard menu, in according to the normal criteria of the civil life. But when he had arrived in suburbia, has seen modern and functional “chalet”, in according the norms of traditional architecture. Old functionaries, who had left their job, cured the gardens , until their young loving the rock music had found assistance in the old house of the grand-parents, for assuming few drugs in privacy or loving some friend of University.

  Those communities were made by translators, usually of leftist American poetries, that so had left Neruda, singers no very valid, gays already depending by fitness and the bad life.

  He would like a girl, also paying her, but he must go to sleep and is thinking that he would find her tomorrow. First to close the light, his thinking had gone to that what happened in the air with the woman of 40 years, and he would call her address. He remembered a travel before, respect that always in Spain, when he had known a girl of 30 years born in Andalusia. She didn’t like for him the usual “top” seen in important party or the muse of some famous writers, who utilizing a his particular technical could obtain by her a sure but unintentional freshness.

  Being interested in same way to be happy with her, he tries to pose a certain attention for exiting from the usual situations. Nevertheless the traditional behavior of Andalusia remained always present in the actions of the girl. He remembered still her lingerie, but, respect the impressions had by the Madrid women, retained his sensations very different. He wanted avoid it and tried to think about other. In fact just now in TV there was a “tele-novela “ and he followed very good the Spanish tongue, but he preferred the French. Nevertheless he would sleep and therefore that was easier, because he couldn’t able to follow an order about the story of TV.

  Next day he will walk and he posed his attention about considerations of actuality.

  He was having a polemics against the Usa big industry and the ease economy of the market.

  He retained that the Spain had had in last 10 years a strong progress; nevertheless his happiness makes the Spanish people more similar to our South people, which with they were similar also for the a strange form of sadness.

  The welfare level looks like more that of North Italy. But respect to ease flows of money whom happened in Usa, in Spain he considered that there was a better social attraction to the popular traditions. The Spanish people liked “flamenco” and “corrida”; in the discotheques there wasn’t a total diffusion of American
music as in Lombardia, but there was a large space for the Latin sounds. Next the tastes of certain foods make him to think that, for the strong and aromatic flavours , whom adapted them-selves to the wines, didn’t be so strong as those of Portugal or the South Italy, but they offered a particular pleasure.

  When Antonio came in Germany or Usa for job reasons, he would have tried an Italian restaurant for “pastasciutta”, while in Spain he liked much the local cooking. He walked with pleasure in the Madrid centre. He loved the Ministers quarters, because they remembered him the old greatness of Imperator, which the economic progress is going to obtain in other way.

  But if the Spanish Imperialism had been a big military and colonial power, the Zapatero government wasn’t any of all that.

  The people was busy in the job and there was a certain sense of protection of civil rights. There are many couple of same sex, but, because he had seen the same thing in many cities of North Italy, he considered that normally. The life in the Madrid streets was particularly intense; the people stayed together in groups: there were the university students, the English tourists, Germans, and also many Italians. There was great confusion and chaos, many persons were drinking until losing the reason and finished badly their night.

  But in the other persons he had seen a certain dignity, a way of doing near to aristocracy because particular. But they were situations whom remember to him the life of Milan or Brescia: while at Brescia the context was different, because the discotheques were fewer and more sure, the people knows him-self. They had more money and also more possibility for pleasures, but the approach to the risks was responsible.

  At Madrid as Milan the people lived the global dream, he was feeling part of a historical evolution, whose aspects didn’t happen still in an exact way. There was a collective sentiment which was getting to the marketing , communication and mass media society. But which was the relation with the tradition? He was thinking to the film of Wim Wenders “Lisbon story”. He considered Lisbon a nostalgic and in the same time romantic place, and so the German film-maker had been able to interpret the dream.

  He retained him-self ridicule for the fact to think it so and he would like be a “Don Chisciotte”; in fact the Cervantes romance, representing the first period of the modern literature, happens in the same way which Manzoni had descript something about Don Abbondio. But while Manzoni believed in a good finalism, Cervantes had posed only questions and no the relations with the ethics. The religions and the ideologies want a strong separation between good and bad, but for example Nietzsche had talked hardly about the Church and Plato ethics, considering also for absurd a return to Greek divinities.

  Antonio was sure that from the sociology he was going in an auto-referential dream, which could become dangerous, if he had drunk much, so the research of a woman would distract him by excessive fantasies born in this back-ground. Surely at Milan he lived in situation whom communicated stress, but the Madrid restaurant, where was going to eat “paella”, had given him a sense of peace for the gentleness of the waiters and was feeling that the time flowed in according to some moments not different by Brescia. Therefore he had lift the idea to find a “prostituta” and he prefers to go to the cinema.

  We have tried to describe so the world of Antonio: he would be in guilt, but he prefers to be a “lombard” with honesty. He would talk about sex situations to the friends at return, but he hoped always to find at Brescia a good girl and therefore his tourism risked to remain such only by a cultural view. He had gone to see a nice film, which in Spanish he understood few, because he followed better the English; but the facts were happy and gave him a good sense of sympathy, because the actors were very able and ready for a dramatic situations.

  He retained that he would like Madrid for a week. In fact it was his interest to see museums and panting galleries, but he walked few, so often he turned to sleep in hotel, reading some book or drinking something in the freezer. He remained longer in his hotel room, not knowing if to call or no a whore between those whom he had seen to walk in the ground of the hotel. But in this hot night of Madrid he didn’t try the pleasure with a girl, if he would consider her an ease adventure. He was feeling an intense romanticism, in the foods, in the smell, in the eyes of the girls.

  In his room he continued to think about the woman known in the air; in the Spanish TV he tried to study the faces of the actresses and the speakers and was seeing similarities with the women of Lombardia and Veneto, whom he sees usually in the trains for the work. The sentiment of Latin women communicated him a nostalgic sense, which he lived sadly drinking “porto”. Returning to Brescia, Antonio would talk about something with the friends. If he had wanted to speack about Wenders and Borgess they wouldn’t understand that certainly, nevertheless he closed TV and continued to drink other glasses of “porto”, until falls in sleeping.

  Some little considerations about the actual romance.